ROARING SUCCESS!
‘Black Panther’ pounces into greatness
“BLACK PANTHER” matters.
In an era of white-guy superheroes, the latest Marvel movie gives us an action icon out of Africa, and a role model for young African-American fans.
“Wonder Woman” empowered female nerds. Now “Black Panther” provides the same for geeks of color — a hero who looks like them.
Sure, there’ve been a few black comic-book characters before, like “Blade.” And maybe you forgot Halle Berry’s “Catwoman.” Some of us tried. But the superior “Black Panther” creates an entire Afro-centric world. And it’s a long way from the dusty, dirty stereotype that some bigheaded, small-minded people see.
In Wakanda, the newly crowned King T’Challa reigns over a hidden high-tech paradise — hidden because they don’t want outsiders exploiting their most precious resource. It’s an alien ore that can fuel spaceships, power weapons and cure disease.
But the secret gets out. And a deadly stranger arrives — someone who wants to use this amazing power to start revolutions around the world.
His by-any-means-necessary message is pretty startling in any big-budget movie, never mind a comic book one — Marvel meets Malcolm X. And while the film doesn’t endorse his call to arms, that it even raises the issue shows the serious ambitions of director Ryan Coogler.
The movie doesn’t wear those ambitions lightly, though. Chadwick Boseman is impressive as King T’Challa — who moonlights as the avenging Black Panther — but the script confuses dignity with dullness. He’s not just stiffnecked, he’s a stiff.
Luckily, he’s got the lively Letitia Wright as his teasing teen sister (and scientific adviser), Danai Gurira as his death-before-dishonor general, and the eternally regal Angela Bassett as his mom.
Grumpy T’Challa may be on the throne, but it’s the women who rule.
And Michael B. Jordan adds fire as Killmonger, the radical who wants to pull Wakanda out of its comfort zone and into an armed struggle. That’s a storyline Coogler underlines by setting an early scene in Oakland, Calif., birthplace of the real-life black power group.
Still, this is a studio superhero movie, not a Spike Lee joint. It never pushes the revolutionary politics too far. It’s still careful to give us one decent white character, token or not. And it provides plenty of pure, comic-book action. In one scene, a spy mission in a Korean gambling house turns into a high-speed car chase. In the film’s climax, a civil war erupts, with fierce warriors from a gorilla cult battling brutal rebels on armored rhinos. A riskier movie might have used that ending as a cry against black-on-black violence — after all, it’s Wakandan killing Wakandan. A livelier film would have had more fun with King T’Challa’s interactions with the outside world. But this is just one film. Cats have nine lives. The Panther will be back. And so will I.